In The Hour Before Death
by Setep Ka Tawy
Summary: He had pretended to die. Never quite got there, of course. What he hadn't anticipated was that dying wouldn't be a one-time thing. Dying was a process, a slow, empty agony. Post-Reichenbach. Oneshot.


**Author's Note:** This is another little snippet based on my head canon of post-Reichenbach events - in this case, that Sherlock hides himself away at Mycroft's for six months after the Fall. I wanted to create an interesting comparison between Sherlock and John during that time, in that one usually gets a lot of "poor John feeling depressed and alone and struggling to move on" - but what would happen on Sherlock's end of it if going through something similar?

Anyway, it was interesting to write - a struggle between the rational and the irrational, between the logical and the emotional.

Enjoy!

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**In The Hour Before Death**

_Dong. Dong. Dong._

He huddles a little lower on the sofa, the curve of his spine pressed into the corner between the upholstered arm and wood-rimmed back. It's uncomfortable, and his body doesn't really fit there – he knows it never will – but he stays there anyway. Physical comfort isn't something he finds important anymore. His eyelids waver and slip downward, pulling a rough curtain over the orbs beneath.

_Dong. Dong. Dong._

They snap open again. He musters the mental energy, somehow, to shoot a hard look at the door leading into the hallway. He can see it now, lurking in the shadows, with a brass tongue swinging lazily back and forth behind the glass, darting through a single bar of light. He hates that clock. He knows he hates it because his mind has taken the trouble to give it a personality – sinister and malicious and yet somehow completely distant. He also knows how completely irrational it is to anthropomorphise a clock.

_Dong. Dong. Dong._

Interesting. He's registering the low chiming in groups of three. He wonders vaguely why that would be. Maybe it's his subconscious telling him that whatever hour it is can be divided by three as well. If so, his subconscious knows something he doesn't. Turning his face back forward again, he waits, but the clock has fallen silent.

Looks like his subconscious had it right after all.

He hates that clock, hates its innocent, mocking peals that echo through the house every hour on the pretense of making time pass. But he hates the silence even more. You can't glare at silence, you can't blame it or throw things at it or yell at it because silence does not react. Silence is nothing, and he'll never understand what people mean by the term "loud silence" because it just isn't true. Silence is a void and at its deepest it becomes filled with all the things you can hold back by listening to something.

All Sherlock has to listen to is his own breathing. And that isn't enough to fill the void.

He drags his knees up to his chest and wraps his dressing gown around everything except his bare feet. He can already tell that this is going to be one of the bad nights. They never come in any regular pattern but they're always predictable when things get to a certain point. He reaches down and picks up the mug of tea that's next to him on the seat of the sofa (he vaguely remembers Mycroft reprimanding him for this habit, but doesn't at all remember caring) and brings it very slowly to his lips. As he looks down, he can see his vague reflection in the shivering surface of the tea. Pale, with hollows beneath his cheekbones and shadows beneath his eyes. He draws in a small amount of tea between his lips and feels the liquid roll over his tongue and down his throat. It's the only nourishment that's passed his lips in almost two days, besides air. And he hasn't done much better with the whole sleeping thing.

The single sip is all he can manage. It's not as though he really wants it anyway. He replaces the mug on the sofa and folds his arms on top of his knees. His eyes stare blankly around at the furnishings which he no longer registers. He hopes to God that Mycroft won't come in and check on him because he's not certain he could handle the look of pity on his brother's face. He doesn't want Mycroft to see him like this, curled up like a pathetic child, vulnerable and emotional and _weak._ He doesn't want to give his brother any reason to think that his resolve is being slowly but surely stripped away. His resolve is still there. It just doesn't mean anything.

Because Sherlock knows that now that he's here, personal resolve is irrelevant. He knows because he planned it that way. He delivered himself into his brother's custody and thus relinquished control over his own life, on the off-chance that resolve would not be enough. He thinks he can still feel it somewhere, but over the days and weeks it has slipped away into some deeper recess of his being, and he hasn't had the strength to go after it and see if it remains whole or tattered. It's not worth the effort. Why bother expending energy on the meaningless?

And despite all that logic and reason, despite constantly telling himself that it's necessary, _it's necessary, it's necessary_, it still twists a razor-edged knot inside him.

He had pretended to die. Never quite got there, of course. What he hadn't anticipated was that dying wouldn't be a one-time thing. Dying was a process, a slow, empty agony. You don't experience hell after you die – dying _itself_ is hell, especially when you know you'll never get to the end of it.

Sherlock has found himself dying every day, and death will never come for him, because he ensured it. He gave Mycroft the power of life or death, and Mycroft can give him neither in return. So Sherlock is left in his void of silence, fighting to keep everything that has happened locked away inside. He exists only because it is the single option left to him. He survives in the faint knowledge that there is something more than this that he will one day return to.

_Dong. Dong. Dong._

Sherlock's eyes snap open and a harsh gasp explodes from his throat as the sound of the clock tears him from fevered sleep, sleep that he never even noticed take hold. Flashes of sound and colour make one last assault before fading away into nothingness. He slams his face into his hands, trembling. Dreams again. He never had dreams like this before he came here. They're the reason why he's tried to avoid sleeping as much as he can. Every time he thinks they've stopped –

He breathes hard into his hands, struggling against the instinct to look up and stare wildly around the room. He knows what he'll find – nothing. His teeth clench as the realisation slashes across his senses for the umpteenth time. He can't _stand_ this anymore, but there's no breaking point to give release. He can't stand it and he knows he'll do it anyway.

He wants so much to stop dying. He wants even more to stop being alone. At least if someone was there, he could keep dying in the knowledge that one person knows he's still alive. Mycroft doesn't count as a person. And Molly knows, but can't act.

He is alone.

The terrible irony doesn't escape him, either. _Alone is what I have; alone protects me._ Never before this have those words been truer. And never before this has he found the idea so despicable. Alone is all he has left. Alone is what's keeping him safe. Alone is what's bloody _killing_ him –

An animal-like growl of distress escapes into his hands, and he has to force his breathing to slow down, before he begins to hyperventilate. He can hardly control his body, let alone his mind, and that thought wracks the core of his identity. He needs someone here, someone to remind him of who he is, someone to tell him that he's alive and that there's _meaning_ behind everything that he's feeling, that there's a _reason_ for enduring this void that is his silent and powerless hell.

The only person, in the end, who could convince him, has no idea that it's even happening.

_I died for you, John. I'm still dying for you._

Something within Sherlock wants – no, _needs_ – John to know that. He so desperately needs John to understand what really happened, and why, and what he's going through now, still, because of it.

There's an awful ache behind his eyelids now, but he only presses his face harder into his palms. Enough, enough. He needs to regain some sort of control over himself. John is beyond his help now, and he is beyond John's. There's nothing more he can do now except wait.

Wait for _what?_

He's not sure he even knows anymore. Life has been taken from him, and death will not come to relieve him. All he knows is that in spite of the silence, in spite of dying, in spite of being alone –

He will wait.

Sherlock lifts his face only when he's reasonably sure that he won't succumb to the ache in his eyes. He tilts his head back against the edge of the sofa, breathing slowly and deeply. A few hours until dawn, and then he'll have a reprieve for a few days, maybe as long as a week, or even two. In the end, though, he supposes it doesn't really matter how long it takes. Time has about as much control here as he does.

Every hour the clock reminds him of that.

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As always, reviews are deeply appreciated. May the Force be with you.


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